POSTED: 2:50 pm EDT August 29, 2005
UPDATED: 5:58 pm EDT August 29, 2005

BOSTON -- The Muscular Dystrophy Association supports more than 400 research projects around the world. Every day, MDA-supported researchers strive to find a cure for more than 40 neoromuscular diseases.

NewsCenter 5's Natalie Jacobson reported Monday that doctors at UMass Medical Center in Worcester are working hard to find the cause and possible cure for ALS -- Lou Gehrig's Disease.

"Our lab, in particular, has been focusing on one particular genetic cause of ALS related to an enzyme that's present in all the cells of our body normally, but in certain ALS patients, this enzyme is defective," Dr. Lawrence Hayward said.

Hayward hopes that understanding this particular genetic form of ALS will lead to new insights into treatments for all forms of ALS.

"The hope is that if we can understand the mechanism by which this defective enzyme kills the motor neurons, then we can have a better sense of what factors the motor neurons are vulnerable to and what sort of defenses they need," he said.

In the same lab, Dr. Cynthia Higgins is working on related ALS research.

"I have a particular project that I focus on which is the interaction of the nerve cells that control muscles and their interaction with those muscles," she said.

The studies are recent areas of interest in ALS research.

"Based on work in the last five years or so, a number of us have shifted our attention to the interaction between the nerve and the muscle. And that's a new direction, pretty exciting and we've been able to make that shift because of organizations like the MDA," Higgins said.

"We are collaborating with other MDA-sponsored investigators and really sharing our data to try to brainstorm new ideas and think about novel treatments for the disease," Hayward said.